How Economic Dependence Could Undermine Europe’s Foreign Policy Coherence

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras’s flirtation with Russia was not a one-off. Rather, the situation of an EU member state seeking external help — or coming under external pressure to undermine an EU policy — is likely to recur in the future. EU member states are becoming more dependent on trade with, and investment from, non-Western powers for growth — a development that is being strengthened by the response to the eurozone’s crisis. In the future, non-Western powers, especially China, are likely to have increasing leverage over EU member states. Unless European policymakers go further in connecting internal and external policy, this leverage could undermine whatever slow, incremental progress Europeans are making in developing foreign policy institutions and “strategies.” The EU needs to find ways to take into account the negative strategic costs of internal policy, in particular economic policy, and to adjust the former where necessary.